Statistics

[jballou]

Hi again,

I'm mocking up some simple things in Pencil, and have some questions about the way players are using the game.

I'm running at 1920x1080, so I have plenty of space to make new things in the UI, but I'm not sure what the rest of the player base is doing.

When I worked on Insurgency, I helped create an anonymized statistics collection system, where we gathered basic information about how often people played, their client settings, the outcomes of games, etc.

Is there any interest in either adding a statistics service that collects this stuff in real time (with user opt-in), or having either a "create account" or "submit report" features to give us an idea of who is playing the game and how they're using it?

It's certainly not a quick addition, and would require standing up other services that run and consume server resources somewhere, but even if we started with a simple account creation or easy way for users to submit statistics by email, we could start gathering information to help make better decisions about how to develop the game.

[leeor_net]

I have the minimum resolution set to 1000x700 -- this is smaller than 1330x768 and 1024x768. I use Steam's hardware survey to make decisions on typical hardware configurations.

It's a nice idea. I like it. It's probably overkill though. I don't expect to see a whole lot in the way of a user base. A few thousand if I'm really lucky.

For the most part I shoot for your average 8" netbook and hope for the best.

[Hooman]

Yeah! My system is just barely capable of supporting that!

[leeor_net]

Your system is the one I had in mind when coming up with the minimum specs. I did technically take out full screen mode though... might have to reevaluate that with use of in-game dialogs versus system dialogs. Not sure which one I prefer. But that's a whole different rabbit hole to go down.

[Kyrros]

***
I was getting ready to sit down and start a personal re-write of Outpost myself in the next couple of weeks. Completely found out about this project by happenstance when doing my own research, but I hope to be able to put some time in on Git to help contribute to THIS one at some point soon as it will save me a lot of time! - my first post here otherwise
***


At first impression, given that it is difficult (and expensive) these days to even find older tube-based monitors - almost all flat screens are wide format (mostly 16:9, followed distantly by 16:10)

Windows begins at 1024 x 768, but real estate at that size is very limited for modern OS'es - and depending on what dependencies the game uses, older OS'es may not even be possible (read: XP/ME and below) depending on what the minimum specs for the game will be (assume it will be at or higher than it is now, since there's a lot more processes to add under the hood, yet)

I would suggest setting the minimum bar at 1280 x 960 (one step up from 1024x768) for 4:3, and this will also put sizes squarely in the bottom quartile of the 16:9 and 16:10 resolutions at 1280 x 800 and 1280 x 720 (the first true HD) respectively.  If we're gonna call it Outpost HD, lets set HD (1280x720) as the actual minimum.

This will also save a lot of headache down the road concerning things like minimum CPU/GPU utilization for displaying/pathing/turn processing.

Do we need to write this for 8K gaming rigs, no - but we're not running on the same toasters we played the original Outpost on either (not that we could run it on our modern computers now even if we wanted to, since it's so old... Thank goodness for VirtualBox and my old Windows XP install disc!!!)

I love that there are others out there besides me who loved this game in all its buggy glory!

My 2¢

[leeor_net]

Welcome!

I'm still going to plan to stick with the minimum resolution of 1000x700 -- this is for windowed modes and still fits nicely on low resolution netbook devices.

The "HD" in the name is less related to HD display modes and more the higher resolution renders and color depths used by the game. Certainly not the greatest name ever but it's better than Outpost: Missing In Action or Outpost Reboot or such. It also makes for a really really short but identifiable handle for GitHub (OPHD)

The name isn't set in stone though, I'm open to ideas. I may even just call it OUTPOST for the sake of simplicity.

Code contributions would be very helpful! It's been a slow processes but I've been able to get a lot accomplished. A few other contributors have pushed code into the project and it's helped move the project along considerably. Without their help OPHD wouldn't be as far along as it is.

My suggestion with the code is to not be too worried about how 'good' it is -- there's some truly heinous code in OPHD -- I with a "Make it work now, make it pretty later" mentality. It's helped to get it moving though it has lead to some problems getting things to sort of fit together. Mostly the event system but with some doing I finally got that nailed down.

You can take a look at the open issues on GitHub, check out a local copy of the code and play around with it. There are a few assumptions I make in the code that aren't well documented so if you have questions (I should probably say "when" you have questions) by all means ask. It helps me to understand how to better document the code for other developers and on occasion myself when I look at something and wonder what I was thinking.